What We Are Reading Today: ‘Browsings’

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Updated 17 June 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Browsings’

Author: Michael Dirda

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Michael Dirda compiled a year’s worth of literary essays in his 2015 book about books, aptly titled, “Browsings: A Year of Reading, Collecting and Living with Books.”

Written on Fridays between February 2012 and February 2013, the essays started out as 600-word columns in The American Scholar that combined the literary and personal. Soon, Dirda found that the word counts naturally ballooned, sometimes doubling and even tripling due to what he referred to as his “natural garrulousness.”

In the intro, he writes: “These are … very much personal pieces, the meandering reflections of a literary sybarite. The essays themselves vary widely in subject matter, and rarely stick closely to their stated titles.”

A longtime book columnist for The Washington Post, Dirda also writes regularly for many literary sections in publications such as the New York Review of Books. The Washingtonian Magazine once listed him as one of the 25 smartest people in the nation’s capital.

This collection of essays serves as a true celebration of American literature. Dirda explores his serendipitous discoveries and the joy of reading for its own sake. His passion goes beyond bibliophilism; the compilation is his love letter to all the books he has encountered along his journey.

The writer’s quick wit is demonstrated clearly on the page, and he comes across as that bookworm friend who can talk endlessly about books with enough passion to make you fall in love with reading again.

“I hope ‘Browsings’ as a whole will communicate some sense of a year in the life of an especially bookish literary journalist. I also hope that it will encourage readers to seek out some of the many titles I mention or discuss,” Dirda writes.

The books he examines are diverse, and he provides readers with insights that jump off the page. The essays are short enough, but he requests that one read only a few at a time.

“Allow me to make two small recommendations: First, don’t read more than two or three of the pieces at one sitting. Space them out. That way ‘Browsings’ will take longer to get through and you’ll enjoy each essay more. Trust me on this.

“Second, consider reading the columns in the order they appear. Each is meant to stand on its own, but I did aim for a pleasing variety in my choice of topics, as well as a seasonal arc to the series as a whole.”

 


Book Review: ‘America’s View of the East, Cinematically’ by Abdulmohsen Al-Mutairi

Updated 22 May 2025
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Book Review: ‘America’s View of the East, Cinematically’ by Abdulmohsen Al-Mutairi

Saudi journalist, filmmaker and cultural commentator Abdulmohsen Al-Mutairi launched his long-anticipated book — “America’s View of the East, Cinematically” — at last month’s Saudi Film Festival.

Cementing his reputation as a vital voice at the intersection of cinema and Arab identity, the book is a natural progression from his award-winning documentary, “Memories From The North,” tackling Western portrayals of the East with the same precision, intellect and emotional clarity.

Al-Mutairi drew wide attention for his documentary, which offered a poetic look at the Gulf War of 1990-91 and was named best short documentary at the 2022 festival.

“The documentary looks to me like a chapter in a book, because both memories and the war look like chapters to us. To me, the war is a timeline, there is a beginning, middle and an end,” Al-Mutairi told Arab News at the time.

“America’s View of the East, Cinematically” continues that mission, serving as both critique and chronicle of how Arab and Eastern identities have long been distorted by the cinematic lens of the West.

“This encyclopedia will be a building block added to what the Saudi Film Festival has started since its launch in 2008 and an effective tributary in the path of Saudi cinema, reinforcing what the festival organizers believe in and what they seek to achieve by emphasizing that the film industry must be accompanied by a knowledge industry directed at those working in the local and Arab cinema field,” according to its introduction.

More than critique, the book offers a kind of cinematic reclamation.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Book of Alchemy’ by Suleika Jaouad

Updated 22 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Book of Alchemy’ by Suleika Jaouad

In “The Book of Alchemy,” Suleika Jaouad explores the art of journaling and shares everything she’s learned about how this life-altering practice can help us tap into that mystical trait that exists in every human: creativity. She has gathered wisdom from one hundred writers, artists, and thinkers in the form of essays and writing prompts. Their insights invite us to inhabit a more inspired life.


What We Are Reading Today: Pico Iyer’s essay ‘The Joy of Quiet’

Updated 21 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Pico Iyer’s essay ‘The Joy of Quiet’

Pico Iyer’s essay “The Joy of Quiet” dissects modern life’s paradox: the louder our world grows, the more we crave silence. The essay was first published in 2012 in The New York Times.

With the precision of a cultural surgeon, Iyer — a travel writer famed for his meditative prose — exposes how digital noise erodes human connection, leaving us drowning in a sea of notifications yet thirsting for meaning.

But this isn’t a diatribe against technology; it’s a forensic examination of our collective burnout.

He maps a silent counterrevolution emerging in the unlikeliest corners: Silicon Valley CEOs fleeing to Himalayan monasteries, Amish-inspired “digital sabbaths” trending among younger generations, executives paying to lock away their phones and nations like Bhutan trading gross domestic product for “Gross National Happiness” as radical acts of cultural defiance.

Iyer’s genius lies in reframing silence as an insurgent act of self-preservation. A Kyoto temple’s rock garden becomes a “vacuum of stillness” where fractured minds heal; a tech mogul’s secret retreats — funded by the same wealth that built addictive apps — mock his own industry’s promises of liberation.

The essay’s sharpest insight? Our devices aren’t just distractions but “weapons of mass distraction,” systematically severing us from presence, empathy and the sacred monotony of undivided attention.

Critics might argue Iyer romanticizes privilege (not everyone can jet to a Balinese silent retreat), yet his message transcends class: in an age of algorithmic overload, solitude becomes not a luxury but psychic armor.

He anticipates today’s “attention economy” battleground, where mindfulness apps monetize the very serenity they promise to provide.

His closing warning: “We’ve gone from exalting timesaving devices to fleeing them,” feels prophetic in 2025, as AI chatbots colonize conversation and virtual reality headsets replace eye contact.

Less self-flagellating than Orwell’s colonial reckonings, “The Joy of Quiet” offers no easy answers.

Instead, it dares readers to ask: When every ping demands obedience, what revolution begins with a silenced phone? What if reclaiming our humanity starts not with consuming more but with the radical courage to disappear?


What We Are Reading Today: ‘In Asian Waters’ by Eric Taliacozzo

Updated 21 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘In Asian Waters’ by Eric Taliacozzo

In the centuries leading up to our own, the volume of traffic across Asian sea routes—an area stretching from East Africa and the Middle East to Japan—grew dramatically, eventually making them the busiest in the world.

The result was a massive circulation of people, commodities, religion, culture, technology, and ideas.

In this book, Eric Tagliacozzo chronicles how the seas and oceans of Asia have shaped the history of the largest continent for the past half millennium, leaving an indelible mark on the modern world in the process.


Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

Updated 21 May 2025
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Book Review: ‘Hope in the Dark’ by Rebecca Solnit

In an era of climate collapse and political upheaval, Rebecca Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark,” first published in 2004 and later updated in 2016, redefines hope not as naivete, but as a radical act of defiance.

Part manifesto, part historical corrective, the book resurrects forgotten victories to prove that progress is often invisible, nonlinear, and collective.

Solnit, a historian and activist, dismantles the myth of powerlessness by spotlighting movements that reshaped history despite seeming futile in their moment.

The Zapatista uprising of 1994, she argues, redefined revolution not as a single explosive event but as a “slow conversation” across generations. The fall of the Berlin Wall — unforeseen by experts — she wrote exposes the fragility of oppressive systems when met with sustained dissent.

Her 2016 update weaves in Black Lives Matter and the Standing Rock protests, framing them as modern iterations of this “subversive hope.”

Central to Solnit’s thesis is the metaphor of darkness, rejecting apocalyptic fatalism: “The future is dark … like the darkness of the womb.”

Hope, for her, is the audacity to act without guarantees, a lesson drawn from anti-nuclear campaigns of the 1980s and post-Katrina mutual-aid efforts like the Common Ground Collective.

Stylistically, Solnit merges lyrical prose with critical urgency. She chastises media narratives that equate activism with failure if immediate victories are not won, noting that the eight-hour workday and abolition of slavery were once deemed impossible.

Her chapters unfold as interconnected essays, blending memoir (her 1980s anti-nuke protests) with global dispatches (Chile’s democratic revival, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution).

Critics may crave more policy prescriptions, but Solnit’s goal is philosophical: to reframe activism as a practice of storytelling, where every protest rewrites the dominant narrative.

The book is not a roadmap but a compass, guiding readers through despair with historical proof that “the impossible is inevitable.”